Jimenez enjoying a career season
Spaniard already has won 2 majors this year
Everything about Miguel Angel Jimenez catches the eye.
His curly, orange ponytail; Top Gun aviator sunglasses and bizarre preround stretching routine have made the Spaniard a recognizable face to just about every golf fan.
But what endears Jimenez to so many is not his appearance, but his lifestyle.
Dubbed by his admirers “The Most Interesting Man in Golf,” a play on the Dos Equis advertising campaign, Jimenez caps every round of golf with a Cuban Siglo VI cigar and a glass of red wine. His golf shoes are made from fine Italian leather. He drives a Ferrari and posed with his wife for their wedding photos on the hood of a Rolls Royce.
Jimenez loves the good life, but he also loves the grind. That’s why at 54 the 21-time winner on the European Tour has been in the states playing on the PGA Tour Champions, the first time he’s ever competed on an American tour fulltime.
“Oh it’s nice. The conditions here are always very nice,” Jimenez said. “They treat us very good here.”
Jimenez is one of several European Tour regulars who have decided to play their senior tour careers in the U.S. There is a senior tour in Europe, but its prize money does not compare to the Tour Champions. And according to Bernhard Langer, the stone-faced German stalwart of the tour, nor does the competition.
“I tell the guys who come here for this tour that it’s going to be a lot harder than they think it’s going to be, and they all know that,” Langer, 61, said. Jimenez might not know that. This season, his fourth on the Tour Champions, has been one of the best of his entire career.
He’s already won two of the Tour Champions five major tournaments this season, the Senior Open Championship and the Regions Tradition. On Thursday, when he tees it up at Phoenix Country Club, he’ll be competing for the Charles Schwab Cup, a year-long award given to the tour’s top player.
“I never had any majors on the regular tour. That has been a bit different this year,” Jimenez said. Winning the Charles Schwab Cup would make the year “amazing,” he added.
Heading into this week’s tournament, the last of the season, Jimenez is currently in third place in the Charles Schwab Cup standings. He’s currently chasing Langer, a four-time cup winner.
If Jimenez wins the tournament and Langer finishes worse than second place, Jimenez will win the cup.
It’s easy to imagine someone like Jimenez, a man of wealth and taste who frequently indulges in life’s many pleasures, would strive to retire in his midfifties and drive off into the Spanish sunset. But for all of Jimenez’s many passions, golf remains his No.1 vice.
Along with his Tour Champions scheduled, the pot-bellied smoker with the complexion of an ostrich skin jacket still travels back across the Atlantic to play in European Tour events, he has designed golf courses all over the world and recently opened up a golf academy in Spain.
“I’m on to the next stage now, but golf is still my life,” Jimenez said.
Traffic note
Osborn Road between seventh & 12th streets will be restricted to one lane in each direction, on a 24-hour basis.